How conservatives are wrong when they red-bait the ACLU

[usregimechange]

In quoting ACLU founder Roger Baldwin some conservatives imply that Roger was a communist and that the ACLU is still pressing a communist agenda. The later is clearly false but the use of Roger’s "Communism is the goal" quote before the Nazi-Soviet pact obscures what he actually believed about communism.

Roger Baldwin did work with some communists in his early years and shared their drive to end social and economic inequality. Roger, however, denounced the use of violence, repression, and dictatorships as a means of achieving that goal. In an interview with Peggy Lamson in 1976 he faulted the communists for not being “friends of democracy” and presided over the ACLU Board that fired a member for her communist views.

The reason for firing Elizabeth Flynn was not to improve the ACLUs image as some claim but rather because any ACLU Board member who supported dictatorships in other countries could not be trusted to support civil liberties in America. Civil liberties you realize do not thrive under dictatorships and for this reason the ACLU represents, on the social dimension, the precise opposite of communism.

In 1976 Roger said he would still choose communism over fascism but added the following statement: “I hope to God I would never be faced with that.” He also said that if ACLU staff still considered communists friends of democracy after the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 that he was “sorry for their illusion and sorry to loose them.”

Even if Roger hadn’t changed his mind about communism it would still not follow that the current ACLU is communist. Some of our nation’s founders believed in slavery and had slaves. That fact does not make the United States a supporter of slavery today.

There are other ways of expressing discontent with the ACLU than resorting to red baiting. Such methods are politically effective but at the same time, in my view, reduce the value of honesty and weaken our communities. As for Roger you can certainly fault him for denouncing communism belatedly, but the organization he founded espouses the liberties (like them or not) that would have been and were impossible under soviet communism.

[papau]

1. Roger Nash Baldwin was a founding father of freedom-perhaps read his bio

Roger Nash Baldwin (January 21, 1884–August 26, 1981) was a noted civil libertarian, pacifist, and social activist who held Communist views in his youth. He was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union and his thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being.

"So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy."
Roger Baldwin (awarded the Medal of Freedom by the President on January 16, 1981, the highest honor that can be given a civilan)

"Roger Baldwin was, in a way, one of America’s founders. The original founders invented the Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century; 130 years later, Baldwin invented a way to enforce it. This is his story and it is told in rich and fascinating detail. A must read for those interested in how rights are acquired and kept."
—Ira Glasser, Former Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Nash_Baldwin

<snip>Roger Nash Baldwin was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts to Frank Fenno Baldwin and Lucy Cushing Nash. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Harvard University; afterwards, he moved to St. Louis, where he worked as a social worker and became chief probation officer of the St. Louis Juvenile Court. He also co-wrote Juvenile Courts and Probation with Bernard Flexner at this time; this book became very influential in its era, and was, in part, the foundation of Baldwin's national reputation.

In St. Louis, Baldwin was also greatly influenced by the radical social movement of the anarchist Emma Goldman; he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and developed a lasting sympathy for the Soviet Union and Communism that lasted until 1939, when he was disillusioned by the Nazi-Soviet pact and broke off all radical ties. In 1927 he visited the Soviet Union and published a book, entitled Liberty Under the Soviets, which contained extensive praise for the country he later denounced.

Baldwin was a lifelong pacifist; he was a member of the American Union against Militarism, which opposed World War I, and spent a year in jail as a conscientious objector rather than submit to the draft. It was out of the American Union against Militarism (specifically, its legal arm, the National Civil Liberties Bureau) that the ACLU formed after the war, with Baldwin as its first executive director.

As director, Baldwin was integral to the shape of the association's early character; it was under Baldwin's leadership that the ACLU undertook some of its most famous cases, including the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Sacco and Vanzetti murder trial, and its challenge to the ban on James Joyce's Ulysses. Baldwin retired from the ACLU leadership in 1950, but remained active in politics for the rest of his life.

In 1947 General Douglas MacArthur invited him to Japan to foster the growth of civil liberties in that country, where he founded the Japan Civil Liberties Union and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government. In 1948, he was invited to Germany and Austria for similar purposes.<snip>



About Baldwin and the Communist Party...by DUer mcscajun
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2127756&mesg_id=2127784

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. I disagree with ACLU a LOT of the time

but I am grateful they are there. Somebody needs to keep watch, even if they do go over the top now and then. Better that than not far enough.

[tabasco]

3. Fascists have no need for individual liberties.

All power to the corporate/police state !

The fascists use propaganda to convince the gullible masses that the ACLU is a bunch of commies, rather than an organization dedicated to protecting the US Constitution, epecially the Bill of Rights.

[usregimechange]

4. Which makes American conservatives much closer to fascism

than American Liberals.

[ElkHunter]

5. The right wing charge that the ACLU is communist is...

...ridiculous. All one has to do is read a little about the ACLU's response to the McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950's to see that the charge is false. The truth is that the ACLU wasn't always so noble in those years. They not only failed to protect the civil liberties of many of the communists that endured political persecution at the hands of the government, they even caved into the pressure of the times when they removed Elizibeth Gurley Flynn, a communist, from their board of directors.

Don't get me wrong: I have been a proud member of the ACLU for many years. But organizations, like people, are not always consistant and certainly have flaws. Even so, I believe that especially in these times every progressive ought to be a member of the ACLU.

[usregimechange]

6. kick

[Comadreja]

7. Freeper knee jerk reaction to ACLU

NAMBLA! NAMBLA!